First Trogan asteroid circling sun in Earth's orbit discovered: NASA’s Wide—field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission has discovered a long—hidden companion of the Earth — the first Trojan asteroid circling the sun in the Earth’s orbit. Trojans are asteroids that share an orbit with a planet, locked in stable orbits by a gravitational balancing act between a planet and the Sun. Neptune, Mars and Jupiter are known to have Trojans.  Two of Saturn’s moons share orbits with Trojans. Scientists had predicted Earth should also have Trojans, but they have been difficult to find because they are relatively small and appear near the sun from Earth’s point of view. Earth Trojan using data from NEOWISE, an addition to the WISE mission that focused in part on near—Earth objects, or NEOs, such as asteroids and comets. The NEOWISE project observed more than 155,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and more than 500 NEOs, discovering 132 that were previously unknown. The team identified a small asteroid named ‘2010 TK7’ as an Earth Trojan after follow—up observations with the Canada—France—Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The asteroid is roughly 1,000 feet (300 meters) in diameter. It has an unusual orbit that traces a complex motion near a stable point in the plane of Earth’s orbit, although the asteroid also moves above and below the plane. The object is about 50 million miles (80 million kilometers) from Earth.  The asteroid’s orbit is well—defined and for at least the next 100 years, it will not come closer to Earth than 15 million miles (24 million kilometers).

Indian Diaspora tops remittance list: Just how much do the 27 million global desis, scattered across 190 countries around the world, contribute to the Indian economy? World Bank figures show a dramatic increase of almost 162% in the remittance that India receives from overseas Indians over the last eight years. While India received nearly $21 billion from overseas Indians in 2003, the figure jumped to $55 billion in 2010. World Bank data also points to the fact that India receives the highest remittance, followed by China ($51 billion) and Mexico ($22.6 billion), Philippines ($21.3 billion) and France ($15.9 billion). Though there was a slight dip in remittance from 2008 to 2009, it bounced back in 2010 to a level higher than in 2008. Kerala and Punjab are currently among the states which receive the highest remittance from overseas residents.

Polio eradication by 2012 'at risk': The Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) admitted that the global plan to stop polio transmission by 2012 is "at risk". Though the progress made by India – one of the four main countries still home to the crippling virus was termed as "exciting"—the persistent transmission of polio worldwide is being called a "global health emergency". The warning from IMB is chilling: the disease will resurge, if it is not completely eradicated. According to IMB, the fight against polio is being hampered by a $590-million funding gap coupled with weak political leadership in some countries and persistent problems in the quality of key polio vaccination campaigns. Though worldwide cases of polio have been brought down by 99% - from 350,000 in 1988 when the GPEI was founded to around 1,000 cases in 2010 - the target to eradicate it by 2012 might be elusive. The IMB said, "India is on track to interrupt polio by end of 2011.  The main concerns are two countries – Nigeria, and Pakistan. About Nigeria, it says, "Nigeria made good progress in 2010, cutting polio cases by 95%. However, political commitment waned during this year's election campaigns, with the result that there were five times as many cases in the first half of 2011 as there were in 2010." The committee said, "Pakistan has seen 54 polio cases so far this year, double the number recorded in the first half of 2011, and risks becoming the last global outpost of this vicious disease." India saw a 94% decline in polio cases in 2010, giving it a real chance to finally eradicate the crippling disease.